Safe at school
Warning: The following article contains a brief reference to assault.
Q: There’s been violence at my school before, and sometimes I’m scared to go. I want to pray, but I’m not really sure how.
A: I’m glad you’re thinking about prayer as a solution. It is always a solution. I had an experience that taught me more about how feeling God’s presence can help us feel—and be—safe at school.
I was a first-year art teacher in a high school, working late one evening. My classroom was in a separate building from the main school building, so I was pretty isolated.
School hadn’t been easy. I had a difficult class dominated by a nineteen-year-old gang leader. He needed to pass my class in order to finally graduate. But between his behavior and the fact that he didn’t want to do the work, things weren’t going well. That night, I didn’t hear him enter my classroom. Without warning, I was in a neck lock with a knife at my throat. He asked me if I knew how easy it would be for him to rape me. He told me that we were all alone and that no one would be able to help me.
I grew up attending Christian Science Sunday School and really made what I learned there my own after college. So I had a deep understanding of God and who we are as His children. In that moment of being threatened, I didn’t have time to think or pray, but, surprisingly, these words came fearlessly out of my mouth: “You would never do that because that is not your nature.”
I really felt that those words came from God. I’d learned from reading the Bible that God made us in His image and likeness and that “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Because of my practice of Christian Science, I knew that we are all children of God, who loves us and guides us as any good parent would. And as a high school teacher, I’d been praying each day to see all of my students that way. I’d also been praying for their protection.
I didn’t feel any fear, because I knew that what I’d learned about God and His creation was true for this student and that God is ever present—guiding and protecting all of us.
The student hesitated for a few seconds, then released me and said, “You’re all right, Ms. Anderson.” After he put his switchblade away, we sat down and had a heart-to-heart chat. I learned about his difficult childhood and some of the things he’d faced. We talked for two hours. I forgave him and told him how much God loved him.
This young man’s past experiences had him believing that he was a bad person because no one had ever voiced the truth to him. But I knew that his spiritual nature as the reflection of God, Spirit, was forever untouched by history, circumstance, or trauma.
The next day in class, when someone was disruptive, he stood up and demanded silence so that everyone could learn. That evening, he brought much-needed materials to my classroom and built new shelves for our art projects and supplies. That was the end of the problem. His whole attitude changed, and his grade went from an F to an A- by the end of the semester.
Several years later, I ran into him in the grocery store. His entire disposition was different. He was so proud to introduce me to his wife and child. And he told me how much my class had influenced his life and that he had one of the ceramic objects we made in class on his mantel to remind him of what he’d learned. He had felt God’s love, which erased the darkness of his past and brought light into his life. Just a few moments of prayer acknowledging his true identity as a child of God had changed everything for him.
This experience gives me the conviction that no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in—in school or anywhere else—it’s natural for us to live what we know of God’s love and to see the effects in our own life and the lives of others. When we listen to God and see the good that is always present in everyone, we are able to respond fearlessly and with spiritual strength, even in a scary situation.
